A number of consultations with the sector are currently open ranging across issues such as leasehold, planning reform, consumer redress and local government finance.

If you are responding to any of the consultations, it would be helpful if you could provide us with a copy of your consultation response to help with our deliberations. If you have any queries on any of these documents please get in touch with Karen.brown@northern-consortium.org.uk

Considering the case for a Housing Court: call for evidence

This call for evidence seeks views and opinions from landlords, tenants and the judiciary to help the government to better understand and improve the experience of people using courts and tribunal services in property cases, including considering the case for a specialist Housing Court.

The consultation is available here and is open until 22nd January 2019

Provisional local government finance settlement 2019 to 2020: consultation

This consultation seeks views on proposals for the local government finance settlement for 2019 to 2020, in particular from representatives of local government.

The settlement includes an additional £20 million in funding for the New Homes Bonus and the baseline for growth, below which new allocations of the Bonus are not paid, will stay the same at 0.4%.

The 2019 Spending Review will confirm overall local government resourcing from 2020-21, and the Government is working towards reform in the local government finance system. Prior to these reforms in 2020-21, the Government has also committed to publish a Green Paper on the future of Adult Social Care.

This consultation seeks views on the approach to measuring the relative needs and resources of local authorities, which will determine new baseline funding allocations for local authorities in England in 2020-21.

The consultation is open until 21 February 2019 and is available here.

Proposals for greener developments

The government is consulting on mandating biodiversity net gain in development to ensure habitats are protected and enhanced for the future. In plans published for consultation, developers could be required to deliver a biodiversity net gain when building new housing or commercial development – meaning habitats for wildlife must be enhanced and left in a measurably better state than they were pre-development.

The consultation is available here and will run until 10 February 2019.

Reinvigorating commonhold: the alternative to leasehold ownership

The Law Commission has published its Consultation Paper on commonhold reform, “Reinvigorating commonhold: the alternative to leasehold ownership”. The paper, together with a summary and various other related documents, can be found at the following link: https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/commonhold/.

This Consultation Paper seeks to address the perceived shortcomings in the legal design of the commonhold scheme and proposes reforms of commonhold as a workable alternative to leasehold, for both existing and new homes.

The consultation period runs until 10 March 2019.

In addition, MHCLG is calling for proposals on Private Shared Homeownership

The government is seeking proposals to provide new routes into affordable home ownership. This call for proposals covers three categories:

private shared ownership which would be primarily privately funded

other private affordable homeownership products which should be primarily privately funded

other innovative routes into homeownership which do not require government investment but may require the removal of regulatory or other barriers

These proposals should provide new routes into homeownership by leveraging both private sector funding and capacity to deliver. The government offer is to either act as a co-funder of these proposals (investing on a loan or other recoverable basis) or to act as a facilitator removing regulatory or other barriers.